February 21, 2003

Track Teams Prepare Themselves for Heps

Tomorrow, the men’s and women’s track teams will host twelve other schools at the Denault Invitational, their last regular season meet. So far this year, both teams have produced identical stellar results, placing second at the Penn State meet, first in the Cornell five-way, first in the Harvard/Brown meet, first against Army and Yale, and sixth overall at the extremely competitive Penn State Invitational. The Red men and women will look to extend their winning streaks this weekend but also have their sights on Heps next week.

“The competition this weekend will be from smaller, not incredible schools,” said women’s head coach Lou Duesing, “But we’re still going to run it like any other race. All of our athletes will go all out because this is a chance to enhance our Heps performances and chances.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams realize that the competition in this meet will probably not be as stiff as either team has seen all season. Nonetheless, every athlete knows that it is a chance to fine tune and improve performances for the last time before the Heptagonal championships.

However, to reduce the risk of injury and mix up the usual routine, some athletes will not compete and others will compete in different events.

“We’re going to rest some of our long distance runners this weekend,” said Duesing. “They’ve put in the mileage all season, and this weekend they really can’t do anything else.”

Duesing also commented on the philosophy behind mixing up events.

“We want to put people in events that will help their Heps performance. That means that if we want to improve our middle distance runners’ stamina, we might put them in a longer event, or if we want to work on speed, a shorter one,” he said.

With indoor Heps championships a strong possibility for both the Red men and women, neither team wants to risk losing an athlete only one week before the meet.

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Before passing a resolution condemning the University’s Slope Day plans, the Student Assembly (S.A.) raised questions about the impartiality of Director of Elections Leslie Barkemeyer ’03 at its weekly meeting last night. Campaign “I am sorry that I have to stand before you today, but I must publicly ask that Leslie Barkemeyer please step down from her current role as Head of Elections,” said Christopher Dial ’04, currently campaigning for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual Questioning (LGBTQ) liaison S.A. position. Dial’s concern over Barkemeyer’s impartiality stemmed from a meeting in which he claims she discouraged him from running for the LGBTQ position because of her affiliation with the Cornell Democrats. “She confessed that … she had been asked to meet with me to discourage my running,” Dial said. “I do not think it is fair to anyone in this election to have Ms. Barkemeyer act as the Head of Elections because her loyalty to other student groups clearly has and does conflict with the standard she is being asked to uphold.” In a brief written response, Barkemeyer denied the allegations. “I did not tell Christopher not to run. I will not resign because of this false accusation. It is troubling that even before the campaign period has begun these candidates resort to personal attacks,” she stated. Slope Debate The S.A. began an extended discussion over Slope Day with a report from the Slope Day Steering Committee. The presentation focused on the history of Slope Day, committee members, proposed plans and issues of contention and collaboration. “We can all agree that the safety of the student body is the primary concern. Secondly, we want to make [Slope Day] as fun as possible. Our motto is ‘Have fun; don’t die'” said Zachary Conine ’03, Steering Committee member. The presentation also addressed some concerns expressed by S.A. members, specifically over whether the Steering Committee should blindly accept the demands made by the administration. “The students of the Slope Day Steering Committee would love it if [the S.A.] could get the charge overturned, but we want to err on the side of prudence and have something really fun planned in case [the charge isn’t] overturned,” said Justin McEvily ’03, Steering Committee member. “We are trying to make the best of a bad situation.” “I think that acknowledgment clears up a lot of misgivings,” said Stuti Mandala, S.A. vice president of finance, in regards to McEvily’s position. Questions were also raised about the effectiveness of catering Slope Day in curbing potentially dangerous situations such as sharing drinks and binge drinking. “If you are hell-bent on making your last day of classes centered on drinking yourself into a stupor, there is nothing we or the administration can do about it,” McEvily said. Addressing the S.A.’s concern that fencing in the slope is not really necessary, Conine said, “By installing fences, our goal is not to limit access to the Cornell community, but to limit access to those who don’t have a part in Slope Day,” referring to an incident last year in which a 15 year-old girl was taken to Cayuga Medical Center due to excessive alcohol consumption. “This is not an issue where we can make everybody happy,” McEvily said. The S.A. discussed the issue of Slope Day further with a resolution condemning the unilateral nature of the President’s Charge to the Slope Day Steering Committee. “There’s a difference between this resolution and the [S.A.’s ad-hoc] Slope Day Committee. It’s stating that we don’t like [President Hunter R. Rawlings III’s] decree, that it was a unilateral, ridiculous thing to bring to us,” Barkemeyer said. “I would say the majority of people here support the resolution,” said Josh Katcher ’06, Class of 2006 representative. Although the resolution passed after a tie-breaking vote was cast by Executive Vice President and acting chair Sai Pidatala ’04, some members of the community expressed disapproval of the S.A.’s actions regarding Slope Day. “Over the past week I’ve been bombarded with petitions, advertisements and quarter cards that in my opinion amount to nothing but propaganda … Antagonizing an administration that has already made its decision is not going to help anything,” said Krystyn Tendy ’06. James Lamb ’03 agreed. “All you guys have really said is that students are fighting students about Slope Day … and I don’t care, I’m a senior … James Lamb doesn’t give a damn!,” Lamb said. Archived article by Elizabeth Donald

The undergraduate community will be given the opportunity to take part in a survey distributed by Institutional Research and Planning over the next several weeks. The survey aims to gather information about the undergraduate experience here at Cornell. “This is an opportunity for us to ask students their opinions about different things happening on campus,” said Marne Einarson, senior research and planning associate. “We are concerned about things such as interaction among students and faculty-student interactions. It’s really a way for students to make their voices heard,” she said. All students registered for the spring semester were mailed a survey invitation on Wednesday. A follow-up e-mail, providing students with a link to the online survey, will be sent next week. Students will have the opportunity to fill out the survey between Feb. 24 and March 9. The survey was developed by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education and will be distributed by 27 other colleges and universities including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Duke and the University of Chicago. Once the survey is completed, Cornell will be able to analyze not only the data gathered from its student body, but also the information from all the schools which were involved in the survey. The survey will also include a number of additional questions tailored specifically for Cornell. The information provided by the survey will be used by a number of different groups. “This is stuff that the institution pays attention to,” said Michael Matier, director of institutional research and planning. “A variety of colleges pay attention to this for their advising practices. Gannett pays real close attention to what comes out of this,” Matier said. The survey results will also be important to the ongoing West Campus Residential Initiative project. “There’s a question asking [students] about a new community recreation center on West Campus. We are trying to find out what things the students would most likely use. The questions in there [the survey] are going to be helpful for the people planning the program for that building” Einarson said. The survey distributors hope that they will be able to get a large number of responses from students. “For us, trying to encourage a broad spectrum of students to participate is important, so we know the results we are getting are representative of the whole student body,” Einarson said. Previous surveys which Institutional Research and Planning has conducted have yielded response rates of 50-60 percent. Institutional Research and Planning has implemented a raffle drawing in order to encourage students to complete the survey. The sooner a student fills out the survey, the greater number of times his or her name will be placed into the prize drawing. Prizes include electronics, discounts off of Cornell Dining meal plans and men’s ice hockey tickets to next year’s Harvard game. The anonymity of students will be protected during the analysis of the results. “The data will be managed in such a way that everyone’s data is held confidentially.” Matier said. “[It is] done on a coded basis. Nothing is ever produced or published which would allow an individual student’s data to be released. Confidentiality is very closely guarded.” The survey is open to all undergraduate students who registered by the third week of the semester. Students who have registered late, however, may still participate by contacting Institutional Research and Planning. Archived article by Jeff Sickelco